


Flesh and Ink

by VileVenom



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, Inspired by Art, Inspired by video game, M/M, Ori is an artist, mentions of Dori and Nori, mentions of the Line of Durin, there is a cat too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 23:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/892922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VileVenom/pseuds/VileVenom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ori has been an artist all his life. Ever since he was able to pick up a pencil and scribble on a piece of paper, he’d done little else. Of course, his brothers weren’t exactly prepared the first time one of their youngest brother’s creations sprung from the page and began to run around the house.<br/>Ever since, he’s learned to keep an eye on his sketchbooks, and where he could send some of his more wayward creations, should he not have the space to keep them. Though, he’d never had anything larger than a great dane escape his papers.<br/>So, of course, he never expected to wake up one morning to find one of his commissions rummaging around in his art room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flesh and Ink

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by:   
> http://news.mymiddleearth.com/files/2012/11/OriGuardiansOfMiddle-earth.jpg
> 
> And apparently how Ori can bring his writings to life in Guardians of Middle Earth

Ori sighed quietly as he let his pencil skid idly across the page he’d been doodling on for the past hour or so while staring absently out the window. He barely noticed as small ink figures rose up from his page and skittered away, leaving smeary black spots where they once resided on the paper. He finally took notice when a butterfly he’d drawn haphazardly landed on his nose.

"Oh!" he gasped, jerking back and very nearly falling straight out of his chair. He shooed the butterfly away and took note of the miniature ink army he’d accidentally created.

A set of tiny bunnies where trying to create a burrow under his desk, while several tiny birds and butterflies fluttered about his light and window. A small cat was curled up on one of his chairs, and at least a dozen small dragon-like creatures were slithering or sauntering around his drawing room.

"Drat," he grumbled to himself, shuffling about to try and collect all of his creations, opening the window for those that could fly, and wondering if, perhaps, his neighbors wouldn’t mind taking in a couple more pets. After all, who wouldn’t love a cat with paint splatter patterns in its fur?

Once he’d managed to corral all of the lizard creatures into the spare bedroom (which he’d long ago designated as his ‘temporary holding room’ for when he wound up having creative doodling fits), he trundled off to make a few phone calls to see if anyone might want some stylized animals.

Ever since Ori had been very small, he’d somehow held the ability to bring his drawings to life. Not that he could ever quite figure out how that worked, of course. Some days his drawings would spring right up from the page as he finished the last stroke, while others seemed shy, and would take a day or so before crawling out of the pages of his latest sketch book. Others, yet, remained blankly on their paper, never to catch a breath of life. And, thankfully, nothing larger than a dog had ever emerged from his works. He really had no idea how he’d ever react should one of his larger pieces ever come to life, or (heaven forbid) one of the portraits he drew.

His gift was, of course, looked into by several different agencies when he was young. If he’d been able to control his gifts, he was sure he would’ve been shipped off to some government facility to be trained, much like he’d heard had become of a few other youths in his childhood neighborhood when their own gifts emerged. But, his ‘powers’ were deemed non-lethal, manageable, and non-threatening, and thus his brothers were often left to deal with the random creatures that would occasionally crawl out of Ori’s books on their own.

It never kept either of them from encouraging his craft, though. If anything, his eldest brother became more encouraging, even going so far as to invest in expensive art supplies, and gift them to Ori as birthday and Christmas gifts. All in all, it simply made Ori quite prepared to deal with and find homes for his wayward creations.

Once he’d managed to pawn the remaining lizard creatures he’d created off to a local herpetologist, he sighed happily and turned to the cat still sitting in his arm chair. Although he’d only drawn it in simple grey scale inks, it had come out of the paper with soft looking orange fur, and yellow-gold paint splatter style patters across its hind legs and front paws. It mewled at him plaintively, before curling into the pillow on his chair and let out a sleepy snort. The redhead couldn’t help but smile at the action, and quietly cursed himself for realizing he’d wind up keeping the cat, seeing as somehow it had already managed to worm itself into his heart with the simplest of actions.

Ori wandered over to his arm chair, reaching out to scritch the cat behind the ears, earning a loud, low rumbling pur as the cat stretched its head up and nuzzled into his hand.

"Well, then," he murmured to the cat, his smile slightly crooked as the cat seemed to turn its full attention to him when he spoke, “What shall we call you?"

The cat was of no help, of course, simply flopping over onto its side and stretching out, in a silent request to have its tummy rubbed.

"Right," Ori hummed, obliging the cat as he contemplated what he’d name the small beast. “How about…Iris? Does that sound good to you?"

The cat tilted its head to blink at him, before simply stretching further out across the chair.

"I’ll take that as a yes," Ori said with a laugh, rubbing the cats belly quickly, before standing up and heading back over to his drawing table. “Now," he murmured to himself, settling down in his chair and taking up his favorite sketching pen once more, “I really need to get to work on these character designs…"

Three hours later found Ori surrounded by a good sized pile of doodled on scraps of paper, several open sketchbooks, a couple discarded pen nibs, one broken mechanical pencil, and four neatly tacked up pieces of paper. He leaned back in his chair, smiling happily at the set of designs he’d finally settled on, hanging up on his wall. They were commissions made by a Mr. G. Grey, who’d asked for some medieval style character designs for a tv series he was hoping to pitch to a tv network. When Ori had asked why he didn’t have someone at his company draw them up, he’d simply hedged the question, and stated that a freelance artist would be the best choice, for what he had in mind. The redhead shrugged it off, leaving it up to the eccentricities of the rich.

What he’d ended up with, though, was quite impressive, if he had to say so himself. He started with a rather kingly looking figure, with wild but well kept hair, a hard bearing, and yet eyes that easily spoke about the pains and worries of his life, and perhaps rather dark past. He’d then moved on to a lady he called the King’s sister, who looked much like her male counterpart, yet had a much lighter countenance, and a more motherly appearance overall. Once he’d had those two finished, he decided some younger characters would probably be needed, so he set about working on a pair of brothers, the King’s nephews, perhaps. Ori decided to create contrast in their appearances, despite their similarities, and thus made one fair toned, strong stanced and soft, while the other he made dark toned, impish, and a little more rough.

Ori knew, in the end, he’d need many more designs than the four he’d so far made, but he figured for one day’s worth of work, it wasn’t too bad. Especially since he’d inked and colored them all by hand, rather than using a computer, like many designers had moved on to in more recent years. He figured it was a bit of a risk, creating with his pen rather than pixels, when he was working on commissions, especially if someone wanted something small, that could easily jump out of the paper on him, but he thought the overall appearance was more lively, and the artists intent, perhaps, a little more obvious in their creations when they came directly from their hand, rather than through a computer screen.

"All right, Iris," Ori yawned, shoving away from his desk and scooping the cat up as he wandered out of his drawing room, “I think it’s time for bed."

-

In the morning, when Ori awoke, it was not to the sound of his alarm clock and the smell of coffee brewing in his kitchen, but to the sound of something crashing about down the hallway from his bedroom. He jerked up from his bed, Iris already scratching at his bedroom door to get out.

"What in the world?" he murmured quietly to himself, casting his gaze about quickly to find something, anything, to defend himself against who or whatever was making such a ruckus. Finally, he remembered the hammer he’d borrowed from his neighbor to fix a shelf still sitting on said broken shelf next to his book case. He quickly grabbed it while creeping towards his bedroom door. Iris all but bolted out of the room and down the hallway as soon as she could fit through the gap when Ori opened it, causing the artist to hiss at the cat to be careful. Not that she could understand him, of course.

Ori swallowed thickly as he watched Iris disappear into his drawing room, where the noise was apparently coming from. The noise stopped shortly after the cat disappeared, which did nothing but make the red head worry for the cat’s safety. He quickly shuffled down the hallway, avoiding the creaky floor board, pausing just outside the door to his drawing room. He could hear someone murmuring inside the room, and Iris occasionally letting out a quiet mewl. Ori frowned lightly at the idea of a thief taking the time to talk to his cat, but given the fact that whoever it was, was currently fussing about in his drawing room, and having obviously broken into his house, he didn’t figure sanity was much of a factor.

Slowly, Ori pushed open the door to his drawing room, taking a moment to collect himself, before jumping into the room and brandishing his borrowed hammer like a sword.

"Stop!" the redhead shouted, causing the intruder to pause, their back turned to the artist. Iris jumped down from his drawing table, where the intruder had apparently been petting her, and wound around Ori’s legs, even as the artist trembled in mild fear at the rather imposing size of the intruder. They were a good few inches taller than Ori, himself, and broader in the shoulder as well. If a bit oddly dressed, given the heavy boots and thick leather jacket that nearly swept across the floor.

Cautiously, the intruder glanced over his shoulder at Ori, slowly lifting his hands in the air as he turned around to face the red head, a timid looking smile on his scruffy face.

"Ah, I mean you no harm?" the intruder offered, at which point Ori dropped the hammer he’d been holding. The intruder cringed, taking a sharp step backwards.

"You…This can’t be real," Ori muttered, shaking his head a little and smacking a hand against his cheek. “I must still be dreaming. Yup, that’s it. I’m dreaming. Nice and snug still in my bed."

The intruder gave Ori an odd look, leaning forward a tad towards the muttering, obviously panicking, artist. “Are you all right?" he asked, lifting a hand to reach out towards Ori.

"Nope! Not in the least!" the red head snapped, looking back up at the intruder, who also happened to be an exact copy of one of the prince brother’s he’d drawn only the day before. From the slightly longer than shoulder length brown hair, down to the beaten up looking arrows sticking out of his quiver. And, if the slightly smudged paper on the wall, tacked up right along the other three characters Ori had drawn was anything to go by, it was, in fact, the same young prince he’d drawn only the day before.

"You can’t be here," Ori wheezed, shaking his head slightly, while batting the prince’s imploring hand away from his shoulder, “I can’t have brought a person to life! Oh my god, my brothers are going to freak out…The government is going to freak out!" Ori buried his hands into his hair, while chewing on his lower lip.

Ori could feel tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, just thinking about the repercussions this would bring. His brothers would implore him to keep it a secret, of course. Bringing a person to life from ink and paper would certainly elevate his file from ‘Manageable’ to ‘Unsafe’ in no time. He’d either be banned from drawing, or sent off to a government facility to ‘hone’ his skill. Which, if what his brother told him was anything to go by, was not anything even remotely close to what he wanted. He’d heard plenty of horror stories from people around town, about loved ones being taken away by men in black suits, to either never return, or if they did, acting like a completely different person from who they were before.

The redhead startled violently when a pair of hands settled on his shoulders and tugged him backwards into a solid chest. He gasped, tilting his head back to find his medieval prince staring right back down at him with a worried look on his face.

"I am sorry for causing you distress," the young prince murmured as Ori pulled away from his grip once more, “Though, to be fair, I don’t exactly know how I did that."

Ori wiped at his eyes, taking a few deep breathes to try and calm himself down before speaking. “You came to life, that’s how," he all but wheezed, tugging absently at the hem of his sleep shirt, “You used to be a drawing." He pointed at the smudged paper on the wall when the prince gave him an odd look.

The brunette turned to regard the papers on the wall, looking slightly dumbfounded and shocked as he reached trembling fingers out towards the sheet he’d sprung from. “This is my family," he murmured, Ori quietly shifting behind him, “My brother…My uncle, and mother." He turned to face Ori, suddenly looking less like the majestic prince the redhead had drawn, and much more like a frightened child, lost in the grocery store. “I don’t understand."

The artist swallowed thickly, suddenly coming to the realization that he’d brought a proper person to life. Someone with emotions, and memories of his own, even if they weren’t necessarily ‘real’. The story he’d imagined for his characters was this princes’ reality, and he’d just been tossed into Ori’s life, completely unaware of how or why.

"I’m sorry," Ori murmured, finally taking the prince’s hand and offering him a small, if watery, smile, “Let’s go have some tea, hm? And I’ll explain things to you."

Once Ori had the prince settled at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of tea, and Iris cuddled on the brunette’s lap, he sat down with his own cup of tea, fingers still trembling slightly. “I don’t really know how to go about starting this," the redhead muttered, taking a sip of his tea.

"From the beginning would be good, I believe," the prince replied, fingers curled around his mug, though he never brought it to his lips.

Ori sighed heavily, nodding a little. “I suppose," he hummed, before telling his prince about how he’d come to realize his gifts, how he’d been commissioned to create the brunette and his family, and how he’d never had anything much larger than Iris spring from his books. “So…You can see why I reacted the way I did," he finished, offering the prince a lopsided smile.

"I can," the brunette agreed, still staring down into his untouched tea, “Though, that still doesn’t explain why I’m here in the first place. Why me? Why now? And why not any of the rest of my family?"

The artist swallowed the last of his tea, before reaching across the table to place his hand over one of the brunettes’, sighing quietly. “If I could answer that, I would in a heartbeat."

**Author's Note:**

> I have notes on where to take this story, to continue it, should folks wish for me to continue. As of this moment, I'm not sure if I want to or not.


End file.
